Guest Editors’ Introduction: Decolonising Academia

Abstract

Why decolonising academia again? Engagements with decolonisation and decoloniality in the contexts of curricular and pedagogical transformations are not new. Several symposia, workshops, books, articles, and short pieces have engaged with this challenge, but still, the question remains: How to decolonise academia? Whatever extent to which we engage with this phenomenon, it seems that it will not be enough. The moment we find a decolonial solution to a colonial knowledge-making problem, another challenge erupts. As a result, it is important to conceive the exercise of decolonising academia as an ongoing and inconclusive process. It is this insight that birthed this special issue on ‘decolonising academia’. This special issue has its origins in a symposium, held at Maynooth University on 27–28 October 2022, confronting urgent socio-political demands for academia to become more equitable, relevant, and transformative, while addressing challenges concerning knowledge hierarchies. The space and place where the symposium was conducted proved to be crucial context, as Maynooth University is a predominantly white, European cultural, and intellectual space. The symposium was a brief, two-day intervention, in which black, brown, coloured, and other non-white bodies and voices disrupted the colonial sanctity and linearity of academic spaces. Hopefully, this disruption will remain symbolically etched within academia's ideational and physical structures – its podiums, canteens, and corridors – on an ongoing basis.